


I'd Sooner Die

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Heaven's Civil War, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Rebellion, Young Castiel, Young Samandriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel doesn't remember much from the war, but he does remember Lucifer smiling, slow and rich and so, so beautiful and saying, "One day, Castiel, you will understand." </p>
<p>And, in time, time and error and unbearable loss and in the face of insurmountable odds, Castiel does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Sooner Die

_“I’ll die first.”_

_“Yes... I suppose you will.”_

 

 

Castiel was young when the war began, young and exuberant and blissfully unaware of the tension gathering in Heaven, coiling tighter and tighter and nearing its breaking point with each passing day.

 

He remembers Lucifer, though, and he remembers sitting on his brother’s knee and asking, “Why must you go?”

 

And Lucifer... Lucifer hadn’t lied (Lucifer never lied, not to himself, not to Michael, not to anyone; everyone knew that), but he hadn’t told the full truth either (He never did, even when he was young, even when he stood in the presence of their Father, even when the Creation itself was at stake.) He’s smiled at Castiel, slow and rich and so, so beautiful, and said, “One day, Castiel, you will understand.”

 

And in time (time and error and unbearable loss and in the face of insurmountable odds) Castiel came to understand what his brother had meant. By then, of course, it was already too late, but in the end, Castiel understood.

 

The day that Castiel leaves Heaven, there’s a young angel waiting for him in his favored Heaven, young and bright and shining with callow enthusiasm. The fledgling had taken a liking to him in much the same way he’d taken a liking to Lucifer, and Castiel feels something within him clench – Dean would say it was his heart, but that particular organ is operating without error today – and he smiles down at the angel.

 

“Why are you leaving?” The angel asks, head tilted in one direction in bittersweet miniature of Castiel’s own mannerisms.

 

Castiel thinks for a moment, about whether it would be a kindness or a cruelty to force the being in front of him to find its own way in the world, whether the truth is worth the risk and whether its omission would hurt more or less in the scheme of things. “Someday, Samandriel, you’ll understand.”

 

And in the end, Samandriel, too, understands.


End file.
